Public is invited to drift through the Buffalo Waterfront on a cloud of sounds

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The Fluid Culture Series presented by the
University at Buffalo Humanities Institute -- the folks who floated
a fully made bed in the Commercial Slip last fall -- will mount a
downtown "Tactical Sound Garden" designed by Mark Shepard,
associate professor of architecture and media study.

The downtown waterfront "garden" will be open at 6 p.m. on
Friday and Saturday, May 4-5. Those who wish to participate should
bring an Android mobile phone to the Buffalo Waterfront Canal Side
pedestrian bridge at the entrance to the Buffalo and Erie County
Naval & Military Park.

All Fluid Culture events are free and open to the public and
everyone is welcome.

The Tactical Sound Garden (TSG) is an open source software
platform used to cultivate public "sound gardens" in contemporary
cities. Drawing on the culture of urban community gardening, it
offers a participatory environment to explore social interaction
within a technologically mediated space.

Using a mobile phone running TSG software, participants will
"plant" sounds at spots within an audio environment situated along
the Buffalo waterfront. These sounds were produced by local sound
artists at a workshop held this spring at Squeaky Wheel Media Arts
Center.

These "plantings" are mapped onto the coordinates of a specified
urban space. Wearing headphones connected to a TSG-enabled device,
participants will drift though virtual sound gardens as they move
through that space, listening, altering ("pruning") or "planting"
new sounds of their own selection.

Media Contact Information

Patricia Donovan has retired from University Communications. To
contact UB's media relations staff, call 716-645-6969 or visit our
list of current university
media contacts. Sorry for the inconvenience.